Guns are a costly mistress

Sunday

Sep 29, 2013 at 6:00 AM

Americans' love affair with guns is an enduring passion that could be a fatal attraction. There are an estimated 280 million to 300 million guns in private hands in America — many legally owned, many not. According to a Gallup poll, 47 percent of American adults keep at least one gun at home on their property, and many of those gun owners are absolutely opposed to government regulation of firearms. The same survey reveals that only 26 percent of Americans support a ban on handguns.

Such devotion to guns is both inexplicable and dispiriting. Guns are responsible for roughly 30,000 deaths a year in America. More than half of deaths are suicides. In 2012, 606 people, 62 of them children younger than 15, died in an accidental shooting. Today, more than 8 million vetted and (depending on the state) trained law-abiding citizens possess state-issued "concealed carry" handgun permits, which allow them carry a handgun or other weapon in public.

Each year, more than 4 million guns enter the market. This level of saturation has occurred not because the anti-gun lobby has been consistently outflanked by its adversaries in the National Rifle Association, though it has been. The NRA is quite obviously a powerful organization, but like many effective pressure groups, it is powerful in good part because so many Americans are predisposed to agree with its basic message.

Even if the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2008 that the Second Amendment gives citizens the individual right to own firearms as gun owners have long insisted, suddenly reversed itself and ruled the individual ownership of handguns was illegal, there would be no practical way for a democratic country to locate and seize those guns.

Most foreign countries ban private ownership of guns. Many gun-control advocates would like to see the United States be more like Canada, where there are far fewer guns per capita, and where guns must be registered by the federal government. The Canadian approach has its advantages — that country's firearms homicide rate is one-sixth that of the United States.

But barring a decision by the American people and their legislators to remove the right to bear arms from the Constitution, arguing for applying the Canadian approach is useless. Even the leading advocacy group for stricter gun laws, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, has given up the struggle to convince the courts and the public that the Constitution grants only members of a militia the right to bear arms. "We have to respect the fact that a lot of decent, law-abiding citizens believe in gun ownership," Dean Gross, the Brady Campaign's president, said.

When even anti-gun activists believe the debate over private gun ownership is closed, the question is raised: When is it too late to reduce the number of guns in private hands — and since only the na´ve think that legislation will prevent more than a modest number of the criminally minded, and the mentally deranged, from acquiring a gun in a country absolutely inundated with weapons — could it be that an effective way to combat guns is with more guns?

Our devotion to guns carries a heavy price. On average, 32 Americans are murdered with guns every day, and 140 are treated for a gun assault in an emergency room. Every day on average, 51 people kill themselves with firearms, and 45 people are shot and killed in an accident with a gun. American children die by guns 11 times as often as children in other high-income countries. Firearm homicide is the second-leading cause of death (after motor vehicle crashes) for young people. In 2007, more preschool-aged children (85) were killed with guns than police officers were killed in the line of duty. The U.S. firearm homicide rate is 20 times higher than the combined rates of 22 countries that are our peers in wealth and population. Although guns can and have been used successfully in self-defense in the home, a gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used to kill or injure in a domestic homicide, suicide or unintentional shooting than to be used in self-defense.

Gun violence is a serious drain on taxpayers. Medical treatment, criminal justice, security precautions, and reduction in quality of life are estimated to cost U.S. citizens $100 billion annually. The lifetime medical cost for all gun violence victims is estimated at $2.3 billion, with almost half the cost borne by the taxpayers.

About 40 percent of legal gun sales take place at gun shows, on the Internet or in informal transactions where buyers are not subjected to federal background checks. Though anti-loophole legislation passed the U.S. Senate, it was defeated in the House of Representatives. On top of that, the 1994 ban on sales of certain assault weapons that expired in 2004 was not reauthorized.

There are ways to make it at least marginally more difficult for the criminally-minded, the dangerously mentally ill and the suicidal to buy guns and ammunition. The gun-show loophole could be closed. Longer waiting periods might help, as could stricter background checks by licensed gun shops. Mental health professionals could be mandated to report patients they suspect shouldn't own guns. Drum-style magazines, which can hold up to 100 rounds of ammunition, have no reasonable civilian purpose and their sale could be restricted.